Fall Down Dancing
by Lellian
Summary: One hundred themes, one hundred one-shots revolving around Ino. Expect passion, drama and the odd, obscure reference to the hidden meanings of flowers. Chapter Six: Once upon a time, Ino discovered something much more precious than a future husband.
1. Of Memory and Death in Springtime

**Theme 11 – Memory.**

- - -

It is spring in Konoha. The world is turning a new shade of green, the sun is remembering its own warmth and, today, Yamanaka Ino is falling apart.

She does not care how beautiful the flowers are because she is screaming. She cannot see the earth forgetting how to be a stone because she is trying to tear out her own eyes. Ino doesn't care about _this_ spring because she is trapped in the springs and summers, autumns and winters of years past, seasons that weren't even hers!

This is the drawback of specializing in controlling the minds of others; in the end, they control you.

- - -

_It is spring and she is not she, she's a he and he's a Rain-nin. He's a Rain-nin and, surprise surprise, it's raining. The water is sheeting down from the heavens and there's a girl with him, a girl that he loves who has long hair plastered to her skin, and he gathers her close and kisses her and he's so, so in love…_

Ino killed this man using his own hands and his own sword.

- - -

There are familiar, strong hands holding her down and she arches into them, throwing her bodyweight against a cage of fingers and thumbs. Dimly, she is aware that it is Chouji holding her shoulders while Shikamaru pins her hips and hands, but the pain in her head is more demanding.

And the voices—oh, the voices won't leave her alone and she wants them outoutoutOUT!

"Ino!" she hears Shikamaru yell, but is he a long way away? He sounds so distant. "Snap out of it!"

She cannot hear him. The other voices are louder. And hers, when she screams, is the loudest of them all.

- - -

_It is summer, a summer from years before Ino is born. And not-Ino, a woman this time, is fighting a fire on the grassland. There was lightning and there was dry grass and now there's an inferno and even if the smoke stings her eyes, she cannot let it pass her. Behind her is her home, with all of her loved ones in, so she _has_ to stop the fire, even if it burns her throat and singes her hair and the heat is drinking her lungs dry…_

Ino took this woman's body and jumped off a cliff with it.

- - -

Ino is trapped in memories and the memories are not her own. She is losing herself, turning molten and liquid at the edges, and she cannot tell where she ends and the memories of every mind she's ever forced her way into begin.

Ino is no longer Ino and she hates that.

She can feel all of those minds inside her head, personalities warring with each other to come to the surface, to escape. She is only one delicate little girl – she does not have space for them inside of her.

Ino is bursting at the seams, coming apart.

She cannot hold herself together and she cries out in despair as, even as her comrades' hands hold her body fast, her mind sinks under the sea of memories…

- - -

_It is autumn and Ino/Earth-nin is contemplating growing a beard to keep her/his face warm in the growing coolness. There is a festival, with hanging lanterns and the smell of cooking meat filling her/his hairy nostrils, and the music is all twanging mandolins and the beating of heavy drums. The rhythm thrums up through her/his legs and who wouldn't want to dance on a night like this…?_

This man only died after Ino had used his body to slaughter his entire genin team and made him swallow his own suicide pill.

- - -

Distantly, she hears Chouji crying quietly.

Distantly, she hears Shikamaru yelling at Shizune to do _something_. The small part of her that is still conscious of just who Shikamaru is thinks this is odd – Shikamaru doesn't yell, he's too…

She cannot remember. She is fading and it's almost a relief.

Ino, or what's left of her, drifts. Her own memories mingle with those of the people she has killed.

- - -

_It is winter and Ino is not herself. In fact, Ino is a man who cannot even remember where he came from. All he knows is this: there is snow, there is ice and he's painting all that purity crimson with blood. He giggles as he lovingly slits a throat, laughs joyfully when he spills a kunoichi's guts into the snow. He revels in the kill and he tastes salty rust when he licks the cheek of a young chuunin's cheek, just below the eye he'd rammed a kunai into…_

Ino killed this man because he was abomination, but if she did so by entering the mind of an abomination, _becoming_ an abomination, what did that make _her_?

- - -

The girl with no name floats. It is not lonely here because she isn't really herself, whomever that might be. No one here is alone because no one has any definition and all she needs to do is close her eyes and stop fighting, allow them to take her into their cool, loving embrace…

_Ino._

No one called Ino here.

_Ino_.

No one aside from memories.

_Ino, sweetheart, you're making Chouji cry._

Chouji…the girl with no name knows that name at least.

_I always told you this would happen if you held onto them too tight._

Too tightly…? How was she supposed to let them go? She'd killed them, been _with_ them as they died – letting go was not an option.

_Aii…so stubborn. Well, you always did need your daddy's help._

There is someone else here, someone who isn't a memory, and the girl with no name cringes away from something that is far too alive for this place. The someone comes closer, turns into a blond man and – even though the memories whisper and wail and try to keep her with them – his face is one that she loves enough to pierce her reverie.

_This place is for the dead, sweetheart. Yamanaka Ino does not belong here_.

…she takes a breath. Suddenly there is distance, space in which she can _be_. The memories turn distant, drawn in colours that are not her own. It is a place to honour the dead, yes, but she does not need to be here. He is right – this is no place for a girl of sunshine and seduction such as herself.

Yamanaka Ino's exhale is a sob. "Please get me out of here, Daddy," she whispers.

_Whatever you want, darling._

- - -

It is spring. Her teammates hands are warm in her own and her father is a solid weight at her back.

_It is spring._

- - -

**Lell says…**

It seems I am incapable of writing in a tense that isn't the present one these days…

I wanted to work Sakura into this somehow, but Inoichi made me write him instead. Bloody pushy Yamanakas…

Anyway, there should be one hundred of these at the end, once I've used up all the themes. I wonder how long that will take me…


	2. Garlands

**Theme 28 – Sorrow.**

'_I must be gone, there is a grave  
Where daffodil and lily wave'  
**W. B. Yeats, **__**Song of the Happy Shepherd**_

oOo

Ino knows which flowers she'll put on her friends' graves.

It's a morbid little list she's been working on ever since Chouji and Shikamaru nearly didn't return from trying to recapture Sasuke. It spins around in her mind before she goes to sleep on nights when her loved ones are out risking life and limb for their village.

It goes like this.

Tenten, of course, will get snapdragons – they simultaneously represent deception and feminine kind of beauty, perfect for a kunoichi like the older girl for whom all the world is a deadly stage.

Lee is very, very easy and will get a bird of paradise plant because he routinely comes into her shop and tries to buy the most garish plant in it.

Neji, when someone finally _successfully_ gets past his guard will have his grave wreathed in lilies of the valley, a plant Ino has always found heartbreakingly beautiful, and it won't do any harm that they symbolize a return to happiness – something Ino thinks Neji desperately needs.

For Hinata, Ino wants evening primroses, for the Hyuuga girl's delicacy and grace – it is a flower that is often overlooked until its subtle, melancholy beauty is noticed.

She chooses nasturtiums for Kiba because she thinks he'd be amused by a flower you can eat and also because their vibrant red might as well be for Akamaru since there's no way that the dog would allow his master to die without him.

Shino…Shino is difficult up until she comes up with the idea of bundling basil, thyme and marjoram together with rosemary for remembrance. They are functional and useful and she hopes that the quiet young man would appreciate the sentiment.

Team Seven requires thought - a lot of it.

In the end, she decides on daffodils for Naruto. Lots and lots of daffodils. This is because they are bright and bold and loud in a very yellow way. They also survive most things and Ino doesn't really expect to ever have a grave to use them on.

Thinking about a flower for Sakura makes Ino cry into her pillow when she's sure that no one will hear her. However, she sees the girl's grave in her mind and it is covered in sweetpeas, in a riot of pink and purple and white. It is oh so beautiful and makes her cry all the harder.

A year after Sasuke abandoned Konoha, Ino left a single red rose in front of the boarded up Uchiha compound. It is how it starts and it is how it ends.

She doesn't like to think about it, but Ino has had flowers in mind for her teammates since she was first told about InoShikaChou.

Chouji will get lavender woven into a simple wreath – the herb is for devotion and the oldest Akimichi boy is a stable rock in Ino's effervescent life. Nobody is as loyal as an Akimichi. _Nobody_.

She hopes that Shikamaru is too smart to let himself be killed, but her heart knows he's also too damn noble sometimes so, for him, irises. For his intelligence, yes, but also because he's given her a bunch of them on every birthday she's had that she can still remember.

As for her…well, she once offhandedly told Sakura that the classic lily was the only choice for a funeral flower. But Ino doesn't care about the flowers on her grave.

She just hopes that they'll be there before she has to do the same for the most important people in her life.


	3. So this ninja walks into a bar

**Theme 64 – wires**

oOo

"You look better without the hood." Ino plumped herself next down to the man at the bar and flashed a brilliant smile at the server. "Gin and tonic please - no ice and a twist of lime."

Kankurou just slanted an eye in her direction. "And you look better without the Uchiha."

Her tongue was pert and pink. "Cruel – I always looked this good."

"Oh really?" He leered playfully at her. "I remember less fishnet."

Her smile was equally predatory. "Weren't you aiming to defeat us back then? I wouldn't have thought you'd had the time for fashion critique."

Kankurou intercepted her drink and its bill both. "I called it 'scouting' at the time," he admitted as he paid for her drink. She looked pleased and took a sip, managing not to smear her lipstick on the glass. Her bare leg swung idly, a strappy sandal the pendulum at the base. "…is the hood really that bad?"

'It makes you look silly." Ino's reply was prompt. "The entire suit makes you look fat, in fact."

Kankurou actually looked wounded at that. "It's all muscle." She just raised an eyebrow at him. "…and the big bones. But Temari has 'em as well!"

"Temari gets away with it." His mood lightened when she laughed suddenly and leaned over to pat his leg. Her hair made a tantalizing trail over her shoulder. "Don't worry – it's not that bad."

The hand lingered perhaps long than it needed to and Kankurou watched it return to its owner before his eyes found her face. "Is this us flirting?"

Ino rolled her eyes. "I didn't realize we needed to label it." At his expectant look, she just shrugged. "The Konoha men aren't interesting." Her eyes suddenly turned wicked and he'd never been quite how aware of just how blue they were. "And if Shikamaru says sex with your sister is good, why don't I get to give your family a go as well?"

Kankurou's mouth turned slightly dry at that – women in Suna culturally weren't as forward as their more temperate counterparts in Konoha and the invitation in her eyes was both unfamiliar and intriguing.

She settled back in her seat, satisfied that she wasn't being rebuffed. "Not that buying me a drink guarantees you anything – I'm pickier than that."

Kankurou only had one question. "Why not Gaara?"

If he'd thought her expression had been naughty before, now it was positively devilish. "Why, Kankurou," she said sweetly, "It's because I imagine we can find fun uses for those chakra wires of yours."

'…_and who says you need to be the Kazekage to get laid.'_


	4. Breaking the Girl

**Theme 54: Tower**

oOo

As a child, Ino's life revolved around her father. There is no place in her memory for the woman who gave birth to her and promptly dumped her on her one-night stand's doorstep, so she instead fills her mind with her father. His face, his words, his skill in the kitchen; they occupy pride of place in her brain and Ino is a bright (if precocious) little girl so there is plenty of space to fill.

From her childish viewpoint, her father fills her frame of vision, towering over her, so she can't be blamed for thinking of her father as larger than life. He is her world, always there to rescue her from the upsets in a little girl's existence.

Even as she grows up, Ino remains a daddy's girl. She gets teased for it by her peers, but she's always been a confident little thing – who cares what they say so long as her father loves her and she loves him?

Inoichi is her centre and she expects him to be a constant.

He isn't.

She happens to be at the hospital visiting Sakura when they bring him in, broken and bleeding on a stretcher.

At first, she cannot understand – he is her _father_ and fathers don't bleed from holes in their stomach, they don't look marble pale, and their handsome features shouldn't be contorted in pain as his are.

They've cut off his hair. The same hair that she has, the same colour and worn in the same style. Seeing that visual tie between them severed makes her start to shake, right down to her bones.

She nearly attacks Shizune when the older woman won't allow her into the operating room. She only doesn't because Sakura holds her back, shakes her until her teeth rattles, sits her down in the waiting room and forces whiskey down her throat.

It is a long night.

At some point she must have fallen asleep; she doesn't remember drifting off, but she certainly remembers awakening. It is Sakura and her eyes are soft and relieved.

What Ino feels is not relief. It is a weariness so large that she sags under its weight.

Relief is too small a word.

Her father looks very small in his bed, hair shorn close to his skull, wires protruding from beneath the covers. The veins in his eyelids are very blue and very fine, and Ino's throat is tight with all the words she cannot say.

He scared her.

He is her rock and he _still_ scared her, taking away that previously unshakeable belief that her daddy could beat anything.

Inoichi opens his eyes in a slow, flickering way and his pupils are dilated right out into those cornflower irises until they focus on her. And, even though his pulse is thready and weak, and his body is held together by stitches and bandages, he manages a smile for his little girl.

"Hey, sweetheart," he says, the booming voice that she remembers reduced to a rasping whisper, "You'll have to order take-out tonight – daddy can't cook."

At some point, everybody grows up.

It is in this moment, in this tiny little hospital room with its ugly yellow walls and its ominously beeping gaggle of machines that Yamanaka Ino does so.

She grabs a chair and drags it to the head of the bed. His head is prickly under her fingers, but she strokes it all the same. "No, daddy," she says calmly – more calmly than she's ever said anything in her life! "I'll make it." Her free hand seeks one of his and she carefully squeezes the large, callused palms. "I'll look after you." A pause. "…you don't mind rolled eggs, do you?" It's all she can make.

Her father's laugh, tired as it is, is the most beautiful thing she's ever heard.

She resolves to ask Shikamaru's mother for cooking lessons.

oOo

A month later, Ino applies for the next set of testing for jounin.

oOo

Her first mission upon passing with flying colours is with her father.

_She leads._

oOo

**Lell says…**

I love Daddy-Yamanaka. The older InoShikaChou generally make me happy. :)


	5. An Inocentric World

**Theme 41 – awesomeness**

oOo

Naruto felt sweat beading on his forehead, had an uncomfortable coiling sensation in his belly and didn't quite know where to put his hands – none of these problems particularly befitting the Hokage.

In all fairness, most men who had Yamanaka Ino in their laps suffered from the same symptoms.

"So," she murmured in his ear, positively _purring_ in fact, "Have I mentioned just how _much_ I like blond men."

"Ah, well--."

"The lighter the hair, the more virile the person apparently." Her tongue traced the shell of his ear. "The better they are in bed." She drew back and gave him that look again, the one with the coyly lowered lids and the slanting glance and the tongue tracing her lips… "People say my hair's practically _white_."

"R-r-really?" Naruto swallowed loudly and grinned sheepishly. "Look, Ino--."

"Shh." She actually placed her finger against his lips, though it was more her squirming on his lap that cut his words off. "No words are needed. Well just one, anyway." She plucked his hat of office from his head and dropped it on her own at a jaunty angle, winking at him from beneath its brim. "Just say 'yes', Naruto – I'll make it worth your while."

It hurt to do it, it really did, but Naruto screwed up his eyes and shook his head despite the protests coming from other parts of him. "_Ino_. Not that I don't appreciate this, but I really can't make your birthday a village-wide holiday to celebrate your awesomeness. And Sakura-chan would definitely kill me if I cancelled the cherry blossom viewing festival."

There, he'd said it.

When silence greeted his words, he gingerly opened one eye a fraction, only to have vision obscured when his hat was shoved over his face. By the time he'd pulled the offending article of clothing off, she'd left his lap and was stalking towards his office's door.

…he was pained to note that her stalk contained an awful lot of hip-swaying.

Ino gave him a dirty look from the doorway. "For the record," she announced haughtily, "you need a haircut. And I imagine _Lee_ is better in bed than you."

Her slamming the door made one of the pictures on the wall jump off of its hook. The same one that always fell off when it was _Sakura_ slamming the door.

Naruto sighed and went to fetch the dustpan and brush.

Why did all of the sexy women in Konoha have to be so damn temperamental?

oOo

**Lell says…**

Definitely, definitely farcical in nature. :p


	6. Closer than Blood

**Theme 46 – family**

oOo

Once upon a time, Ino thought she would marry Chouji. Or Shikamaru. She hadn't decided.

Once upon a time, Ino assessed each man she knew or met as a potential mate. And Chouji and Shikamaru, having long since proved able to at least tolerate her, were obvious candidates.

Once upon a time, Ino discovered something much more precious than a possible future husband.

It was in the way that Shikamaru let her sleep on her shoulder and gave her suitors uncharacteristically menacing looks when he thought she wasn't looking. It was in the way that Chouji listened to her talk about flowers for hours on end and smiled at her even when she was in sweatpants and a threadbare t-shirt.

It was in the way that they both never questioned her presence in a fight and trusted that she'd back them up, just as they would for her.

With them, Ino was more than ass-length hair and a sultry figure. And after all the heartbreak and the inequality and the missions the older kunoichi were sent on, Ino treasured the feeling of being valued. Accepted. _Loved_.

Once upon a time, Ino found herself two brothers.

And who said you couldn't choose your family?


End file.
